Macarena Gomez-Barris is a cultural critic, author and Chairperson of Social Science and Cultural Studies at Pratt Institute. She is founder and Director of the Global South Center, a hub for critical inquiry, aesthetic praxis, and experimental forms of social living. Macarena works on cultural memory, race, queer and decolonial theory, and rethinking the anthropocene. She is author of The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives, a book that theorizes social life through five extractive scenes of ruinous capitalism upon Indigenous territories (Duke University Press, 2017). She is also author of Beyond the Pink Tide: Art and Politics in the Américas (UC Press, 2018), Where Memory Dwells: Culture and State Violence in Chile (UC Press, 2009), and co-editor with Herman Gray of Towards a Sociology of a Trace (University of Minnesota Press, 2010). Macarena is author of numerous essays in art catalogues, including work on Laura Aguilar, Julie Mehretu, Cecilia Vicuna, and Carolina Caycedo, as well as essays in numerous peer reviewed journals. She is co-editor with Diana Taylor of Dissenting Acts, a Duke University Press series.
Location: Mediatheque
Part of The Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies Symposium: Art + Environmental Justice:
A free, full-day interdisciplinary symposium to promote dialog on the interplay of environmentalism, social justice, design, education, and the arts.
Scholars, activists, educators, designers and artists working on environmental justice issues will explore the politics surrounding systemic biases and the ways that environmental degradation and climate change intersect with race, gender, and class to create disproportionate outcomes on both a local and global scale.
The day’s agenda will place art and design at the center of these conversations, investigating how creative practices contribute to community and global struggles for environmental justice.
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